“Red” Elhe and “The Dread” Tobi make up the fearsome crew aboard the Red Urchin, loaned to them by a kindly and well-meaning man who really shouldn’t be loaning his hand-built 17-foot gaff sloop to pirates. But, his loss is the Barefoot RAID’s gain!

Pirate Urchin’s Crew Bio: The Dread Tobi began her career in small boat sailing and piracy as a lowly Anchor Wench on a 25’ sloop through the Bahamas back to Toronto, in which she touched the tiller exactly 8 times in 5 months. Plotting mutiny while stewing an angelfish over the Coleman, she succeed in diverting the captain’s attention long enough to steer them into drug runners, a white shark, into reefs and onwards to Cuba. She hasn’t been welcomed on another man’s boat since. Returning to Gabriola, she badgered the owner of Golden Eye (14’ gaff “tent sailboat” by ) until he gave it to her for a song, and sailed her back to Whaler Bay to meet the boat’s maker, Greg Foster. She then wrested the Red Urchin from the hands of Rick Corless in order to put her competitive skills to the ultimate test in the RAID. She takes no prisoners, leaves only bones. 

When Gabriola was formed by rising sea beds of sedimentary rock 40 million years ago, it needed some… soul… and it needed to toughen up. In due time, as legend goes, a fierce pair of lady ballz appeared in the form of the red-hued glacier named Elhe. She scoured and battered our shores, and in her wake sculpted the sandstone into the unique shapes we admire today. The spirited Elhe went on to further adventures, winning renown in lands as far as Mongolia, where she was dragged by a horse and shrugged it off with some hooch and sea salt in the woodstove glow of a yurt. The honorary aboriginal name bestowed upon her is “Little Stinker”, as her vivacious charm is matched only by her deadly competitive streak.

The Red Urchin is a 17’ John Welsford Pathfinder, built by Rick Corless of Gabriola Island. Begun in 2007, he finished her in time for the 2018 Barefoot Raid. Pirates Red and Dread take her over to see if they can push Red Urchin to her limits and not break Rick’s beautiful boat.